Simna’s expression darkened. “Very funny, long bruther. Oh, vastly amusing, yes! Scare the insides out of a man one minute and make him the butt of jokes the next! How clever you are, how witty! How droll.” Rejoining the group, he fell in step behind the herdsman, forswearing his company.
Padding up alongside him, Ahlitah was uncharacteristically sympathetic. “I understand, little man. Don’t take it to heart. If it’s any consolation, I don’t agree with what your mentor just did.”
Simna eyed the big cat warily. “You don’t?”
“No. He can’t make you the butt of jokes one minute, because to me you have been and will always be nothing more than a butt.” With that the cat sauntered off, choosing to parallel rather than follow the herdsman’s lead.
Will I ever figure him out? the swordsman mused as he gazed broodingly at the back of the tall southerner. “If you are a sorcerer, Etjole—and I still hold to that belief as strongly as ever—you will be the first one I ever met that had a sense of humor. Such as it is,” he hastened to add.
Still grinning, the herdsman looked back at his friend. “I come from a simple village, friend Simna. You should expect my sense of humor to be simple as well.”
“Hoy—that I won’t argue.” After a while he increased his pace to move back up alongside his companion. There followed an exchange of jokes that caused laughter to ring out across the plain. The guffawing was wholly human. It did not matter whether the jape was told by Ehomba or Simna. Strive as he might, Hunkapa Aub never got it, and the black litah did not want to.